


The Swift and Silent Approach

by stellatundra



Category: SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash If You Squint, Rescue Missions, Tongue-in-cheek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5263754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatundra/pseuds/stellatundra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“If we get there to find 007 holed up in a hotel with some local beauty, I will kill you.” Moneypenny sounds sincere enough that Q wonders whether it was wise to give her quite so many lethal devices in one go.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In which Bond is captured and Q and Moneypenny ride to the rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Swift and Silent Approach

Q frowns at the screen. Just because you can track exactly where someone is, doesn’t mean you can see exactly what they’re up to. Bond is alive at any rate. He spent two hours in Lucia Sciarra’s house. The nano-blood technology can’t pinpoint exactly where (at least not without a floor plan of the house), but Q would hazard a guess it was Lucia’s bedroom. That had merited no more than an eye roll, same old Bond. But then, after moving several hundred miles to the South, Bond has been stationary again. Which is not so typical.

“So he’s sleeping,” Eve Moneypenny says when he phones her. “Lucky him.” She does not sound at all impressed at being called at this time of night. 

“For fourteen hours? While on the trail of a highly dangerous top secret organisation and on a tight schedule.”

“Fine, it’s not his usual modus operandi,” Moneypenny concedes.

“Flight leaves in an hour,” Q says.

“I hate you,” she says and hangs up. 

*

“This is not how I envisaged spending my leave,” Moneypenny says as they transfer from the plane into the armoured car. It’s the first time she’s actually spoken to him since turning up bleary eyed at the airport, so Q counts it as an improvement. 

“Come on, don’t tell me it doesn’t give you just a little bit of a thrill, being out in the field again, after spending months behind a desk.” He carefully doesn’t say the word ‘secretary’ to Moneypenny. The last person who did got mysteriously re-assigned to data screening. 

She executes a smooth overtake and the speedometer creeps up and up. Q wonders who is responsible for teaching field agents to drive. He doesn’t know whether he’d like to punch them because his cars never seem to come back in one piece, or thank them because the agents usually do come back in one piece. However much the agents appreciate the cars - and Bond at least is very much an admirer of beautiful cars - each one is ultimately disposable. Come to think of it, Bond has a very similar attitude to women. 

Q opens his bag and rifles through it. He’d grabbed anything he thought might be useful, even the stuff that strictly speaking hasn’t been through all the safety tests. 

“I don’t even want to know how you got all that on the plane without causing a major security incident,” Moneypenny says. 

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Q says, not looking up. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Moneypenny says, worried.

“Forgot to tell my neighbour to feed the cats. Stop glaring at me and keep your eyes on the road. Left here.” The car swerves

“If we get there to find 007 holed up in a hotel with some local beauty, I will kill you.” She sounds sincere enough that Q wonders whether it was wise to give her quite so many lethal devices in one go. “And then I’ll kill him. Or maybe the other way round, I haven’t decided yet.”

 

*

They establish that Bond is being held in an underground cell. Q makes it approximately nineteen hours, perhaps round it up to twenty. There are exactly sixteen other people in the building. Not exactly insurmountable odds for James Bond, which leads Q to speculate that he might have been drugged. 

He doesn’t say “I told you so”, and Moneypenny doesn’t apologise for doubting him. She must have trusted he had good reason to drag her out here, or she wouldn’t have come. Probably she knew he was serious as soon as he’d mentioned the flights. Q wouldn’t fly unless it was absolutely necessary and she knows that. Besides, Bond trusted both of them, so they can trust each other. And now they’re here, she’s all business. 

“I’ve got a way in. I’ll need to borrow these,” she says, sliding Q’s glasses off and putting them on herself. 

“I do actually sort of need those to see,” he points out.

“No you don’t,” she says squinting through them. “Hardly a strong prescription, you’re just fond of the geek chic look.”

“Fine,” he huffs, “here’s your earpiece. Don’t forget what I told you about the watch.”

Moneypenny reaches down to secure the concealed blade in her shoe.

“Wish me luck,” she says, flashing a grin.

“Luck. Why do you need my glasses exactly?”

She smooths down the pencil skirt and secures her hair with a pin containing enough tranquilliser to fell several medium-sized elephants.

“Nobody ever suspects the secretary,” she says with a wink.

 

*

Of course it would be a woman. It’s not that Bond trusts women, exactly. More that he sometimes underestimates them. Lucia had caught him off-guard somehow with the vulnerable but not-exactly-grieving widow act. Or perhaps he’d suspected her all along and it was a drink which had caught him out in the end. Either way, it’s not the first time he’s been overpowered and it probably won’t be the last. 

It turns out Bond isn’t the only one who underestimates women. Despite the fact that they are working for Lucia Sciarra, not one of the three people in the entrance lobby so much as pull a gun on Moneypenny. Their mistake. 

It’s no time at all before Q is into the security cameras and alarm systems. Child’s play. He can see that Moneypenny has made short work of at least the first six people in her way. She’s scarily competent and unruffled. If he fancied women at all, he’d definitely fancy her, Q decides. He knows there are some people at Six who wonder why she gave up fieldwork when she showed such an aptitude for it. Q is one of the few who know that was exactly why she gave it up. It’s not exactly an easy thing to live with, being good at killing people. It’s the sort of thing that affects people in a very fundamental way. Which, Q supposes, explains a lot about Bond. 

“End of this corridor, there are stairs to the left,” Q tells Moneypenny. She doesn’t acknowledge him verbally. Bond’s ability to carry on a quippy conversation while being simultaneously engaged in a fire-fight, drinking a Martini, driving a car and seducing the nearest woman is a legendary feat of multi-tasking. Well, to be strictly fair, he can probably only manage two or three of those at once, but even that is impressive. For a given definition of impressive that assumes that he is acting in the name of national security and not simply his own amusement. Which in Bond’s case would be a dangerous assumption to make. 

Two guards are disposed of efficiently, almost silently and Moneypenny unlocks the door with Q’s version of a skeleton key, which melts any lock quickly and virtually silently. 

The mission is very nearly compromised when the door opens and Bond pins Moneypenny to the wall with a jagged piece of wood to her throat. Clearly the minions who orchestrated this kidnapping hadn’t thought it through very well if they left Bond alone in a room with anything which could conceivably be made into a weapon. 

“Not exactly the thank you I was hoping for,” Moneypenny says, slightly croaky, but still demonstrating a certain amount of cool under pressure that has Q wondering about the 00 training programme. Are potential agents required to perform one-liners under increasingly threatening situations? Or perhaps entire stand-up routines?

Bond lowers his makeshift weapon. There’s an unfamiliar expression on his face that Q can’t quite make out from the still slightly grainy CCTV image. It comes to him after a second or two that perhaps Bond is embarrassed - at having been captured in the first place or by being rescued by Moneypenny, or both, hard to tell. 

They don’t waste time, Moneypenny handing over her spare handgun and the two of them out of the cell and along the corridor. 

“Took you long enough,” Bond says with a smirk. He’s looking at the camera on the far wall, and Q realises he’s talking to him.

“Tell him he’s an idiot,” Q says over the comm. Moneypenny laughs slightly under her breath as she breaks into a run.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, flatly, and he can’t be sure which one of them she’s actually saying it to. 

*

In the end they’re in and out and back on the road in less than thirty minutes with minimal fatalities, the alarms disabled so thoroughly that it will probably take another thirty minutes for Sciarra and the rest of the kidnappers to even realise that Bond is gone. It’s the sort of mission Q prefers, and he’d bet money that Moneypenny and M prefer the swift and silent approach as well. Bond, on the other hand, is probably disappointed they didn’t make the whole building go up in flames and cause an international diplomatic incident. Maximum carnage seems to be his usual modus operandi. 

“Anything broken?” Q asks.

“Three fingers on my left hand,” Bond says, cricking his neck as if assessing his body for further injuries. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me?”

Q purses his lips. 

“Of course not. I meant any of my equipment. Your bones will heal faster than I can put together another of those watches.” This is a blatant lie and everyone in the car knows it. 

“I’m touched,” Bond says. 

“You’re insufferable,” Q informs him. “I don’t know why we bothered rescuing you. Moneypenny, do you think we could turn around and put him back?”

She checks the GPS like she’s seriously considering it.

“Not if we want to make our flight,” she says apologetically. “I’ve still got the tranquilliser hairpin, if you want to knock him out for a few hours.”

“Don’t waste it, I need that for the trip home. I’ve haven’t slept in three days and I hate flying.” Q pinches the bridge of his nose. “What?” he snaps when he catches Bond looking at him with another indecipherable expression. 

“Nothing,” Bond says.

*

Q isn’t joking about the tranquilliser. Everything from check-in to stepping off the plane onto English soil is a blissful blank. He has no idea who put a pillow under his head or how he ended up with Bond’s coat as a blanket and decides it’s better not to ask.


End file.
